Little Miss Anal(ytical)

My company sends us for developmental courses (I work in marketing communications) every now and then and recently, I attended my second communications course. Both had us participants fill out a bunch of multiple choice questions, choosing answers that would best describe us in the scenarios given.

Basically at the end based on your answers, you will find out which of these profiles are your dominant ones: The Analytical, The Driver, The Amiable or The Expressive (we are in fact all four).

Lo and behold — both times I took the test, I scored the highest for the Analytical profile, which makes it my dominant profile. My supporting profile was Amiable, followed by Driver and lastly, Expressive.

Can you tell, judging from my blog entries?

I think it’s fairly easy to tell, isn’t it? I am not quick to commit to a vendor (I size up the pros and cons, and want to be able to compare against another), I take forever to publish a blog entry (because I go over it 91472937642692 times to make sure it’s perfect, and I don’t just stop there — I routinely go over my published posts and make edits, too!), I go into the nitty gritty (I live for details, which is why you will rarely find a short entry in this blog — though much effort has been made in moderating the length of my entries). Perhaps you may even have picked up other analytical traits.

These brief tests I took are not to be taken conclusively though. For example, being analytical doesn’t mean I must be good at maths. For the record, I can’t do maths to save my life. If you’re interested, there are even more extensive tests around that will tell you in depth about your profiles under different circumstances.

Anyway the objective of attending such communications or profiling courses is that you will be more aware of your own profile, be able to identify other people’s profiles, and then be able to tailor your communication to fit the person you are in contact with.

I think it would be so very beneficial for to-be-married couples to undergo this so that you have an even better understanding of one another…..even if you think you’re already doing well in the communications department.

This is because at present you only see your other half….what, at most thrice a week? If you currently think your partner is just a little annoying, well — imagine if you have to see him everyday. Tell me that annoying trait is not going to be magnified nth-fold!

Another notable takeaway I thought I’d share is: There is no one profile that is better than the other. Maybe we already know this, but a little reminder wouldn’t hurt — especially because as human beings we tend to judge people. What I lack, you might have and vice versa, so ideally we should position each other’s strengths such that we complement, not oppose.

It’s not enough for one party to undergo such a course, though (I’m thinking to do one with the boyfriend). As we all know, for a relationship to work, both parties need to pour in effort. Plus, the journey to re-discovering each other might actually be quite fun!

I’d say this is pretty useful knowledge to have because it’s also basically universal knowledge you can apply to pretty much every single person you come into contact with, so that it’ll help you get heard and get the outcomes you want.